


In The Attic When It Snows

by JD_Riley



Category: First Holy Cummunion and Other Obscene Sacraments (Comics)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Altar Sex, Blood, Catholicism, Child Abuse, Confession, Exorcism, M/M, Past Sexual Abuse, Priest Abuse, Priests, Rape, References to Character Death, Severe Abuse, South But Haunted, Southern Horror, Tiefer is a Ghost, Torture, Underage - Freeform, Vomit, blowjob, ghost story, near-drowning, past trauma, this is coping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:47:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27484474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JD_Riley/pseuds/JD_Riley
Summary: At first it hadn't happened every night. And then it did. And then it wasn't just tapping but a gentle seeping sound that seemed almost to come through the walls themselves. He'd woken in the night, trembling with his heart in his throat as liquid whispers met his ears. It was easy, he'd thought, for the mind to play tricks. When the air conditioning ran or the furnace blew—the brain could transform those sounds into audible half-voices. But the thermostat had been switched to “off” during the mild not-quite-hot and not-quite-chilly days of early winter and so Jehan had no true excuse for any of this. And they didn't stop. When he was alone at night, lights on or off, he heard the voices—or maybe it was just one voice—speaking to him. And surely it did speakto himand not simplyaround himfor he half knew what it was all about and half knew from whence it had come.There's something in the attic.
Relationships: Jehan Prêtre/Emilein Tiefer
Comments: 13
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ICantBelieveItsNotClaude](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ICantBelieveItsNotClaude/gifts).



It was night and it was chilly and it was dark and cloudless. So far from the city the deep vastness of sky was open and spangled with millions of tiny points of light patterned into the Milky Way. The silver shine of the crescent moon was just as mild as the nip in the air but there was little sound, the wildlife which usually sang from the bayous muted as they hid in their mud and their trees. The sounds of night were usually so comforting and to have them ceased so abruptly was jarring and bizarre, casting the world into some clear but harsh unreality as though it were some dream indistinguishable from tangible existence. The air was clear and crisper than usual, the oxygen content dipping in these midwinter months to give it a lighter, less oppressive quality. The effect was that of muted illusion.

Illusion seemed to be what life was all about for Jehan. The illusion of being good. Of being right or righteous. The illusion of having everything all together all the time. Of being _sure_.

Sure of what?

Sure of anything. There was, for a man like him, no true ability to hold onto something hard enough to let it hurt him. He already had hurt in his heart. How could he afford to hold any more? The night was still and carelessly void around him as he moved through it as though wandering the depth of some vaguely threatening nightmare. A horror story.

_Am I the hero? Or the villain?_

This was an impossible question. It didn't warrant thinking. Jehan tried to ignore it, carrying his grocery bags as he walked down the muddy path which led to the small house next to the church. It was always so damned wet everywhere down here. Even when the air was less heavy and more dry, the land was damp and the grasses were too high. He side-stepped a puddle he noticed only for its reflection of the moon and he pulled out his keys, unlocking the the back door before he wandered into the too-small kitchen and set his groceries down on the table. He hadn't left a light on and it was dark and he just stood there for a few seconds, letting the quiet of the night and the stillness of the house's interior seep into him.

There was a subtle horror just under his skin, tingling and thriving. He didn't want to be here but he didn't know where he would rather be. It was adjacent to the church and it had been built to house the priest of the parish. Three or four priests had lived here before him and if there was one thing he could say about priests: they touched places with a sort of subdued, inconspicuous energy that left nearly no trace of their very existence. When he had moved in, it had very nearly appeared as though not a single person had ever resided there at all. If not for just the barest hints of life before, he might have just assumed the tiny home to have been abandoned for years.

A plastic cup left in the very back corner of the cabinet. A scuff on the bathroom floor. Towel fibers caught on a small nail in the wall at the back of the linen closet. A very small brown stain on the carpet in the bedroom.

The marks of lives lived by men like Jehan were never overt in the ways that other marks by other lives were. Priests had a tendency not to leave stains like that—huge or obvious or wildly evident. They left marks not on places but _people_.

He reached up, realizing his hand was shaking and he touched his fingertips to the white collar about his throat and as he always did at least once a day, he wondered if it was a sign of giving up or giving in.

The subtle terror in his blood mounted until he turned around to the light switch and flicked it on, the small chandelier hanging over the tiny table casting the room in a pale yellow light. It was just enough to let him put away his groceries, stashing his frozen dinners in the freezer of the cream-colored refrigerator before he replaced his half-empty expired milk carton with the new one. This time, he did manage to take out the old one and dump the half-clumped smelly milk down the sink until the lukewarm water could flush it all down. He let the water run for a long time, the smell of it like moss and old pipes until the faucet sputtered a bit and it started smelling better. He didn't bother with a glass, leaning over to drink straight from the tap, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his vestments when he was finished.

He leaned on the edge of the counter in front of the sink, peering at the dark window, unable to see outside for the light inside was too bright and the night too dark. He didn't want to move. His nightly ritual was only the beginning of a familiar strangeness which pervaded his evenings and the bulk of his nights. Nothing could stop it. It was always there.

It had started out as a slight tapping above him when he was sitting in his bed one night reading, a pair of +1.00 reading glasses settled on the end of his nose though he found that sometimes he was looking over them instead of looking through them. (He wasn't sure why he bothered.) The soft light of the lamp that sat on his nightstand had flickered just for a moment when the tapping began and Jehan's eyes had unfocused from the page.

_Tap. Tap. Tap tap tap._

It was a pattern, he thought dumbly. It was a _pattern._ It seemed almost... _human._ But of course the reality of everything was that it was more likely to be an animal who had gotten into the attic, probably via the attic window which he knew was hardly sound, judging by the long stringy crack he'd noticed from the outside when the sun hit it just right. Perhaps something had taken advantage of that crack and had gotten in.

Further inspection from the outside the next morning had revealed that there was no hole in the window. He'd gone about his business and forgotten all about it after that morning only to hear it again in the evening.

_Tap. Tap. Tap tap tap._

Human. It was what his heart told him. That it was not something that simply happened this way—it was _on purpose._ But the attic was tiny and empty save for probably some insulation. He tried to ignore it, but when there's something already hiding within one's subconscious, how is one expected to ignore a gentle knock upon the door? It wakes—this hideous abnormality of soul. It is tapped into consciousness by the smallest of off-kilter knowledge.

_There's something in the attic._

There was always something in the attic, he thought when he touched his forehead and then rubbed it hard, smoothing his hair away from his face.

At first it hadn't happened every night. And then it did. And then it wasn't just tapping but a gentle seeping sound that seemed almost to come through the walls themselves. He'd woken in the night, trembling with his heart in his throat as liquid whispers met his ears. It was easy, he'd thought, for the mind to play tricks. When the air conditioning ran or the furnace blew—the brain could transform those sounds into audible half-voices. But the thermostat had been switched to “off” during the mild not-quite-hot and not-quite-chilly days of early winter and so Jehan had no true excuse for any of this. And they didn't stop. When he was alone at night, lights on or off, he heard the voices—or maybe it was just one voice—speaking to him. And surely it did speak _to him_ and not simply _around him_ for he half knew what it was all about and half knew from whence it had come.

_There's something in the attic._

This dark night in which he found himself staring at his own image in the kitchen window—his tired frightened eyes staring back at him vaguely as an imperfect reflection in the dim light—he was going to open up the attic door. Or, he thought he was. He dragged his feet, discarding his shoes by the front door on the boot mat and shuffling in his black socks to the hallway where the attic access hovered on the ceiling, recessed and unassuming.

He never heard anything in the hallway but there was an energy here, as though something radiated out from that painted little door. He contemplated it for a bit before he let his anxiety take over for him and he just left it, turning into the bathroom where he brushed his teeth and stripped off his clothes for his nightly shower. The water was too hot but he didn't bother turning it down, letting it sting over his skin and pinken the flesh between his scars—a map of criss-crossed memories he tried his best to forget or remember or something between the two. He dragged his washcloth over his body, careful to focus on places he felt the most dirty. Behind his ears, under his arms, between his legs.

_Dirty. Shameful. There's something in the attic._

His towel was the most decadent thing in his life, the plushness far beyond that of the thin carpeting in his bedroom and the near-threadbare bathmat that attempted to poorly soak up the water which dripped down his legs and over his ankles to seep into it, darkening the faded blue fabric. When he was all toweled off, he fluffed his damp hair with his fingers, messily combing through it as he walked, naked, into his bedroom, the chill of the night causing him to reach for the dial of the thermostat.

He paused.

If the furnace kicked on, was he more or less likely to hear the voice from the walls? The whispers that would begin sometime after he'd started reading and end sometime after he'd fallen asleep? He turned the dial anyway and heard the whirring beneath him, a beast in the basement and a— _something_ in the attic.

Jehan went to bed in the nude, leaving only the bedside lamp on so he could read where he'd left off of _In Cold Blood_ which had been his nighttime reading for far too long now. It was unusual for a book to take this long for him to read though when one constantly found their attentions caught by disembodied whispers which sent the heart to the throat...well, no one could blame him, could they? It was too easy to see through the eyes of killers, he often thought before the tapping began. It was too easy to know the mind of a monster.

_Am I the hero? Or the villain?_

The whispers began a half hour into his reading and with them came the disturbing sensation of tingling over his flesh. As though a cold, ghostly hand was settling over on his leg just over his ankle. He stared at the side of the bed though it did not move even as he felt sure that he could sense a weight there. As thought someone—

_Parrain._

—was sitting there, touching him gently as though imploring him of something. Gooseflesh ran in waves over his body and he shivered, moving his legs up to curl closer to the headboard, his hands holding his book like a shield though it was no Bible. Truman Capote could not save him from his memories or his demons. The feeling that someone was sitting there never did go away but Jehan could not read any longer and so he set the book aside and, with shaking hands, took the two sleeping pills he'd set out on the wooden surface of the nightstand. He only ever put two there in the morning for looking at the whole bottle at night was...too much. He swallowed them with the help of a swig of brandy from the bottle under the bed and then another for good measure before he shut off the light and pulled the covers over his head.

He dreamed luridly and viciously—but he did not remember them when he woke and that was a small mercy enough to keep him believing that there really was a God, after all. Even if God was just two little white pills which sat on his nightstand, washed down with a few swigs of brandy.

* * *

“Father Prêtre?”

_Tap. Tap. Tap tap tap._

“Father? Are you awake?”

Jehan was certainly up though he was not certain that he was _awake._ There was irish whiskey in his coffee this morning, something of a cliché for a priest, he thought often. It was in a travel thermos for he had been just about to wander on over to the church for his ritual of taking an hour before his seven AM Mass—though even he had to admit that most of the time Mass on a week day was a little bit of a waste of time since five times out of seven it was just he and the old deacon, Barton, who were mumbling through it as though it had become some self-congratulatory nonsense they did to convince themselves that they were...what? Righteous? He sighed when he opened up the door to find one of his younger parishioners with a finger to the side of the screen, about to tap again.

“Father! Thank Gah—uh, goodness. I was hoping I'd catch you before you were at Mass.”

Jehan imagined the rest of this statement would have been, “ _So I wouldn't have to sit through the whole dumb thing just to speak with you after._ ”

Corbin McGill was a skinny boy with too-big hands for his thin wrists and who looked like he grew up but forgot to grow _out_. He had thick hair parted on one side and cropped tight to his head by his less-than-skilled step mother who seemed to think that hers was the greatest of opinions on what exactly might go on in a household which belonged to her...even with the children who didn't. This morning his eyes were wide and clear though he appeared just as tired as Jehan.

“Father, I can't wait for Saturday. Might you let me confess to you now?”

Jehan lifted up and hand to squeeze at his eyes and then pinch the bridge of his nose. “What could possibly be so important that—”

“It's for my peace of mind, Father.”

“Well then turn about and head on down to the church and we'll—”

“I can't.”

He blinked. “You can't?”

“No, Father. She's there. I can't. I don't want to see her. I don't want to be around her. Please.” He pleaded with his hands, nervously looking over his shoulder toward the face of the church and the tall steeple which seemed to tower over just about anything else in this small, wet place. It was a common enough nervousness and one Jehan was keen to remember from his own teenage years and so he took a few shuffling steps backward and slipped off his shoes again before he wandered over the hardwood into the living room where a couch and a loveseat sat kitty-corner to each other against perpendicular walls.

“Would here be alright? You won't feel nervous seeing me, will you?” he asked, eyeing Corbin warmly and from the side so that he might not be intimidated. It was easy to get intimidated by the collar. It was easy to think there were some men who were more than just men.

_Some men are monsters._

Jehan took a big gulp of his alcoholic coffee, relishing the burn of it as it slid down his throat. Maybe it was this kind of cynicism that would lead him straight to Hell, he thought as he did his best to look at Corbin with a facade of interest to invite his shy reply.

“M-Maybe if you don't look right at me, Father...”

“Of course.” That was easy enough. He sat, brushing the front of his black trousers with one hand and clutching his coffee in the other. With enough distance between them that the boy couldn't smell the Jamison on his breath, he invited him to begin.

Corbin made the sign of the cross. “Bless me Father, for I have sinned, I—” He paused, staring off into the middle distance, not looking at Jehan.

There was a silence that drew on between them and the patient Father Prêtre had his patience _tried._ There was only about an hour before Mass and surely this could not be worth all this. He glanced at the boy to find him still looking off into nothing, a two-thousand yard stare the mark of something greater happening in his mind.

“Corbin?”

“ _Father,_ ” he whispered softly, his voice taking on a peculiar tremulous quality while his forehead shined in the diffused gray morning light despite the chill. “C-Can you...hear that?”

Jehan's ears pricked but he could hear nothing though it did not stop his heart from tumbling far down into his bowels. “Hear what, Corbin?”

“You can't hear him?”

“No. Who is he?”

“I don't know.” All of a sudden the boy's lip was trembling and there were tears in his eyes. “He sounds so young, Father.”

He held his coffee and whiskey cocktail to his chest, now fully staring at the way Corbin's tears dripped over his cheeks. “Maybe we ought to take this to the church.”

“I can't be in here anymore,” Corbin told him, standing up and stumbling forward while he babbled and wrung his hands. “I don't want to be here anymore. I'm sorry. I'm _sorry_ I spat in my step Mama's Carnation breakfast drink, I won't do it again, I'll say my contrition, I'll say my Hail Mary's, I'll do whatever you want, Father, but I can't sit in here anymore! Ain't you able to _hear him, Father?!_ ”

“No, Corbin,” he replied, somewhat breathless with fear, standing up and still holding his coffee to his chest. “I don't hear anything.”

“ _He's so young. He's so young. He's so young...and he's dying..._ ” It was all the boy would say before he staggered out, hitting his shoulder hard on the door frame as he left, the screen slamming behind him as he pounded down the porch steps. Jehan stood to watch him break out into a full run down the muddy path, heedless of the mud puddles which splashed up over his sneakers and his legs.

_He's so young. He's so young. There's something—_

Jehan's heart was thudding and he tried to listen as hard as he could, scarce able to breathe with wide eyes and a pounding pulse. The house was silent save for the gentle hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. He swallowed, finding his throat dry before he looked down the hallway, his eyes finding the attic access door.

_Hands on me. Kind touches that could draw out the worst in me. Sweet fingers carding through my hair and secret kisses over my ear when nobody else was around. Pulling up my alb and sliding warm dry palms over my hips and raking sharp nails over my back._

A burning sensation drew him back to himself and he grunted, urged to move by the discomfort on his shoulder blade. He put on his shoes again and hurried from that damned fucking house, tapping down the steps and wading through the grasses until he was in the church which always seemed older and dryer than the house—filled with a smell not quite like cedar and old teak. He hurriedly rushed into the bathroom which was colder than the rest of the structure and he unbuttoned his black shirt, pulling it off so that he could look over his shoulder at his back.

Three long red welts were drawn down over his skin, running through his scars and even beading a little with pinpricks of blood. He stared at them, wondering if they might even be real. Several blinks later and they were still there so he wadded up some toilet paper and dabbed at them, drawing away the blood until he could put his shirt back on, staring at the flowered red dots on the white wad before he threw it away in the waste basket and tried to calm his breath.

_There's..._

“Father Prêtre?”

He jumped, his hand to his throat, his thumb on the edge of his collar. “Y-Yes?!”

Barton, the deacon, was croaking in his rusty old voice from the doorway, out of sight from the large mirror where Jehan was making sure he was all put together again.

“Just makin' sure you was here is all...I thought I heard the door open. You alright, son?”

“I'm alright,” he replied, trying to make his voice sound steadier than he felt. _I'm alright. I've been alright. I'll be alright._ “Are you ready?”

“Like everyday, Father.”

He sniffed, picking up his cooling coffee and taking another steeling gulp of it before he nodded at his tired, frightened eyes in the mirror and left. He could hardly keep his wits about him during Mass. He could hardly think over how many things he had to do that day. He scribbled down his notes, he walked to Doris McGreedie's house to help her with the death of her husband, and he even managed to remember that he was supposed to help Marigold Winfred and Theodore Dapple with their upcoming marriage—not that his twenty-eight years had really given Jehan any kind of clue what the hell good ever came from marriage. Once the moony-eyed lovers (and surely they were lovers, Jehan thought sagely, as there was no reasonable way Marigold Winfred didn't keep a good looking man like Theodore out from under her skirt) were gone, he leaned back in his uncomfortable wooden chair and opened the bottom drawer of his desk, pulling out the small bottle of brandy he also kept here for days like this. He swigged it straight from the glass mouth, practically kissing it when it left his lips.

Corbin McGill's sweaty face came into his mind and the look of sheer terror the boy had given him. There was something in that house.

_There's something in the attic._

He was still staring off into nothing, contemplating how the morning had transformed this matter entirely with the naked mouth of the bottle pressed against his bottom lip. When the door to the office opened, he startled, somehow shocked to find the brandy still in his hand before he sought to hide it.

“Oh don't get yourself in a twist, Father,” Barton laughed. “You know, if you have a glass, I'll take some o' that.”

He sighed, quietly pulling out the glass he never used from the bottom drawer and setting it up, pouring two fingers in before he set the bottle down on the surface of the desk. His voice was soft and he rubbed at his forehead. “I...it doesn't happen often...”

“I know how often it happens, Father, I've met a lot of priests.”

He took in a shuddering breath. “Alright. It happens often.”

“Ain't nothin' about it I don't know well enough already.” He pulled up a chair and took a sip. “Mm. You ain't got nothin' new goin' on from any Father what come before you.”

Jehan gathered up his courage and picked up the brandy to take another swig from it. Barton had been at this church a long time, through several priests. His old, rheumy blue eyes were squinted in a perpetual smile even when he probably wasn't at all happy about something. If he knew already what most priests were about, did he know about—? Jehan took another sip on the heels of the first and swallowed it a little wrong, coughing a bit while tears formed in his eyes. Good lord, did Barton know about he and...? He was too weak and too cowardly to ask and so he just sat there for a bit, uncertain and uncomfortable.

“It's been a hell of a time for you, it looks like,” Barton commented. “You look like you ain't had enough sleep in a month. Anything I should know?”

His voice was soft and a little husky from the burn of the brandy. “N-no...”

“No?” His smile was relentless. “Well I guess all you priests have your secrets you share with nobody but God.”

_I think my house is haunted. I think I need to do a blessing. I think... I think there's something in the attic._

“I know,” Barton told him in a gentle tone, “that all you boys who come back from seminary think you've got it figured and then you find that nothin' in that little book there really does fuck all to clear out your demons. Be it the bottle, be it...well...anything else...there's just some things you don't escape by bein' married to God. And your daddy...well...there are some demons that follow you down the line, aren't there?”

Jehan's fingers felt cold and there were goosebumps over his skin. He could feel the three scratches on his back again, aching and horrid. He tried to swallow past a lump in his throat and he stared at Barton who still smiled as though he hadn't said something that would have set Jehan clearly on edge. He took another swig of his brandy, his lips trembling a little before he licked over them and tried for a smile, fearing he could only form a grimace. “I g-guess you're right. Sometimes...” he breathed. “Sometimes there's not much we can do.”

Barton simply nodded, throwing back the rest of his drink before he clicked it onto the surface of the desk and then slapped at his knees. “Alrighty. I'm off to do the rest of whatever an old man does in a church this time of day. I think you ought to get some rest, Father. You don't have to worry about anything else today and I know your schedule is clear...why don't you go home and settle in for the night. You spend too much time here. It's not good for you.”

_What's not good is being home. Being in that bedroom. Being anywhere near whatever is in there that touched me...that hurt me._

_Whatever?_

_Whoever._

Jehan nodded unthinking and watched Barton leave, his body suddenly feeling numb as he held the bottle to his chest. He thought about just drinking it all. He thought about curling up drunk in one of the pews and waiting until the sun was up on the morrow to think any more about anything at all. Of course, Jehan wasn't like this, really. It wasn't in him, he thought. He was too steady. He was too _faithful_. So he washed out the glass Barton had used and put it back in the drawer with what was left of the brandy and he washed out his coffee cup too before he wiped his hands on the hand towel and then rubbed at his tired eyes.

Before he left, he collected an amount of holy water and salt and emerged from the church to the steps, finding the sun was low toward the horizon and the whole of the world was cast in an eerie orange. He'd failed to think ahead that morning when he'd rushed out of the little house and so there were no lights on, not even the porch, making the windows appear like darkened, terrible eyes which shined with the coming night. There were clouds in the distance which were dark and heavy and there was a quality to the air that was ripe with frigid moisture.

Jehan could see his breath when he walked back toward the house and he tried not to be distracted by the way the chill seeped through his shirt and his skin until it was rattling his very bones as he stood before the door and sought to murmur out a little blessing, sprinkling the holy water onto the wooden slats and the door.

_“When Christ took flesh he made his home with us. Let us now pray that he will enter this home and bless it with his presence. May he always be here among us; may he nurture our love for each other, share in our joys, and comfort us in our sorrows. We pray this in the name of Jesus our Lord.”_

His hands were trembling when he pushed open the door, waiting to see someone standing there inside the dark foyer.

It was empty.

The orange light seeped in from around him, casting his shadow long and dramatic over the area rug and the wooden floor beyond. He came into the entrance and he sprinkled some more holy water, whispering his blessing as he went. One for the entrance, one for the living room, one for the kitchen, and one for his bedroom. No pale hands crept out from beneath the bed and there was no rustling of the curtains when he was finished. No screaming, no scratching, no wailing or groaning. There was silence around him though in his heart was a heavy uneasiness. After all, all that was left was the attic.

Jehan came into the hall and looked upward, his heart thudding high in his chest as he stared up at the attic access. Could he open it? Could he consider facing what was up there? _The biting draw of whiskey and the sleepy weight of too many painkillers taken all at the same time. The sterile scent of isopropyl alcohol and the cold—the cold!—of the hospital waiting room._ Could he bring himself to reach up and pull down the small cord that would tug at the built-in ladder and—

_BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG_

He was suddenly sent reeling into the door frame of his bedroom, his eyes wide in terror as he watched the little door rattle _hard_ in its place.

_That's him. That's him. That's him._

_There's something..._

_Parrain!_

He doesn't want to feel those feelings again. Loss. Profound loss. The constant no matter how horrifying is still constant. A monster which lives in his heart. Emilein Tiefer had stolen all the _normal_ in Jehan Prêtre's life and how did someone like that—some _monster_ like that—just die? How do they leave so suddenly? How did—

_He didn't._

_BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG._

He grasped at his chest, tears filling his eyes as the door to the attic rattled and shook violently in its frame, instilling within him a dread that led him back in time. To the moments where that same dread had filled him and then back again to where it all began.

_I'm twelve and there's a finger to my lips. I'm twelve and there's just the barest duck fuzz between my thighs. I'm twelve and the prickling crush of puberty has me in a stranglehold. So many firsts when a boy is twelve. The first time the rush of urging horny energy hits and you're sure you know what it is. The first time I felt a touch that was more than just a cursory brush that one gives a child. The first time my parrain put his mouth—_

_Parrain with his hands on my thighs. Parrain with his mouth brushing the hollow of my hip. Parrain kissing my penis. Telling me it's lovely and perfect and: why_ this _is a secret worth keeping, isn't it? Don't I want this again? Doesn't this feel good? Didn't this just make those butterflies in my belly go wild with delight?_

The attic door is still rattling and Jehan's tears are wet on his cheeks and finally he has to draw in a shuddering, terrified breath and he whispers the only words he can think to make it all stop.

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned.”

The noise stopped and the door was silent again and the whole of the house seemed to be waiting with bated breath. He could hardly breathe himself. He didn't want to admit that he felt anything positive for the priest who'd so hideously violated his trust. He didn't want to admit to anything that might possibly feel like _forgiveness._ He wasn't ready for forgiveness. Especially when there had been no such thing as _penance._ There was nothing that had ever punished Emilein Tiefer for the innocence he stole or the lives he ruined or the harm he caused. The only suffering that had been felt in this lifetime had been felt by Jehan.

_That's not true._

It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. He couldn't help it. He couldn't help but be so ungenerous toward the man who'd abused him, who'd raped him, who'd _destroyed_ him. He'd rather that the memories of the good stayed as far away from him as the bad. The hurt and the blood and the sobbing into soiled sheets and the wishing that he could have said something or done something to make it all go back to the way it used to be. And was it the physical pain that was the worst of it? Or was it the rejection? The feeling of not being good enough or smart enough or pure enough.

He mumbled up at the attic, his voice warbling and unsteady. “I don't want to forgive you. I hardly want to acknowledge you at all.” He breathed hard, his sobs heavy as he took in sharp, short breaths. “To do so would be to acknowledge all the residue you've left within me and I'm not ready.”

_I'm not ready!_

“I don't want to think about the man who loved me—who hurt me. Who made me learn too soon that sometimes the people you love the most are the real monsters of your childhood.” No sooner was he finished with saying it, he screamed hard and loud as the attic access door swung down with a bang and the ladder unfolded, skidding over the wooden floor until it was still again and the cold from above sank downward from that new hole as though it were the chill of an open grave. He was drawn to it, a ladder upward though no cool graceful clouds above—only frozen indifferent evil.

Evil?

_Am I the hero. Was he the villain?_

_The simple fact of the matter is that sometimes there are no heroes or villains. Humans are all monsters in the end and they all search for meaning somehow. Whether it is in the pain within themselves or the pain they can inflict upon others—there is catharsis. There is coping. Within all humans there is a deep and abiding violence inherent to humanity that claws its way out somehow. Always. And there is no way to stop it, no matter how hard or how long the struggle._

His fingers found the untreated wood of the ladder and he tried to steady his shuddering breath as he began to climb, helpless to the draw of the dark and the unknown.

_I'm twelve. I'm in the bedroom and the ceiling fan is lazily going around and around and around in circles and it's what I want to focus on because what's happening to me hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts._

The orange light from sunset had faded into a deep and dusty red and it spilled like liquid light through a small four-pane window at the end of the tiny attic and from where Jehan stood on the ladder, he could see what looked like little insects flying downward outside.

_It's snow,_ he thought dumbly, knowing this despite never having seen snow before in his life. _It's snowing._

The chill was that of death and the scent of tobacco came to him.

“ _Jehan._ ”

It was a whisper and it came from somewhere in this tiny room though there was no one there but himself.

His heart rose into his throat. “Parrain?”

_I'm twelve and you're hurting me._

Jehan climbed the rest of the way into the attic, able to just barely stand in the center of the room with the pitch of the roof. He held himself, his breath forming wisps of moisture in the still and musty air and his shadow forming behind him, haloed with the glowing red of the sun as it melted below the horizon. He looked around at the empty room before he came to the window and peered out at the cypress trees swaying in the slightest breeze, their resilience against battering wind and rain and the force of a hurricane something of an inspiration.

_The center of the ceiling fan is bright and when I close my eyes it leaves a trace of itself singed into my vision and sometimes I wish it wouldn't fade away so I could never look straight at you ever again._

“ _Bless me,_ ” he whispered, “ _Bless me, Father...for I have sinned._ ”

“ _Jehan._ ”

“I...” He let his fingertips trace over the glass, watching the curious sight of the snow as it tumbled down from a low dark cloud which did not impede the sunlight's trajectory. “I can't. I can't forgive you. I want you gone from me. Exorcised like a demon. I want you cut out of me. I want to forget you.” Some of the snowflakes kissed at the panes and the bitter cold inched up his fingers into his hand and his wrist and his arm as goosebumps rose over his whole body, as though a presence were with him then. “I loved you. And you hurt me. You betrayed me. And I'm not ready. And I won't be ready. Not for a long time.”

“ _Then you cannot be ready to exorcise me either,_ ” came the vicious whisper from behind him, slithering from the late Father Emilein Tiefer's cold, ghostly lips.

“No,” he replied, refusing to turn, knowing what he would see if he did. A shimmer of a man or a devil or both at once with one red eye and silver hair and the scars of all the abuse he'd ever taken unfairly—or fairly, after all.

“ _There's something in your attic, Jehan._ ”

He couldn't take his eyes off the gently falling snowflakes which melted as soon as they touched the muddy, blessed earth of Louisiana for the first time in his life. His voice was stronger now even as hot tears flooded his vision and he pulled out the salt and the holy water again.

“I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A gift. For all the kindness and understanding one could bestow upon me in a time of unhappiness. Thank you, Claude!


	2. Chapter 2

Forget. Forget. Forget.

Impossible.

How many times did he have to tell Emilein Tiefer “no” before he no longer felt him inside? Crawling just under his skin and his scars, this priest, this man, his  _ godfather. _ How many times did Jehan have to try, try, try to forget? How many drinks would it take? How many fingers of whiskey? How many bottles of gin? How many blackouts and hangovers could one boy have before he could no longer feel dirty or defiled?

He felt like he was drowning. Naked and vulnerable in pink-tinged bathwater which tasted a little metallic and stung and ached in his nose when he accidentally sucked it in. His lungs burning. Burning.  _ Burning _ . Would this be hell? Would he always be drowning in the darkness and the sunset of the attic and the snow? He knew he was still standing in the darkness but he could hardly make out the words he needed to say, feeling the air around him become heavier and heavier, his lungs refusing to breathe it for it was no longer air and he was no longer standing and he really  _ was _ laying down and he was looking upward through the wavering surface of the water and there was a hand in his hair and  _ Parrain _ was holding him down. Through the foam of his thrashing he could swear that he could see the malice in the shape of his parrain's grimace and naked vulnerability in his eyes.

Had that been there when Jehan was young? Had he seen something like that? Or was it only now that he was older that he could see the hurt?

Warbling muted sounds of struggle and the darkening of his sight—was he dying? Could he die? Was this not a dream or a vision or something else wild and divine? He could hear words in his own voice, casting out spirits, casting out the haunt. The churning of water became the whirr whirr whirr of the ceiling fan over  _ Parrain's _ shoulder and Jehan's legs were spread open and he could see himself, the orange and red light spilling around him while he lay on nothing but the fitted sheet, his penis soft and arousal the last thing on his mind despite the way Father Tiefer had wetted him earlier and how many butterflies it had put in his tummy. He didn't want to reach up. He didn't want to touch or be touched.

How many times had he wanted to be touched? How many times had he been so conflicted?

_ Shhh...It's okay... _

The naked fragility in his parrain's eyes pained him. That hadn't been there before. This was his memory but he was looking through his twelve-year-old eyes with a grown-up mind. There was something here between his thighs—retribution. For what?

_ The sins of the father... _

He could feel the soft brutality of his first time. Tears on his cheeks as he reared up and was pushed back, his struggles and his pleas falling on deaf ears. No. Not deaf.  _ Apathetic. _ He was used and it was painful and he didn't want any of it. But that was a lie. He did want some of it. He wanted the warmth of another human against him and he wanted the soft friction of the priest's stomach on his boyish cock. His feeble pushes were swiped away and his wrists were held down. The fucking wasn't savage though it felt like it, the bouncing back and forth more than he could stand despite its gentle cadence and the quiet slapping Parrain's hips made against him. To anyone else it might have been a subtle violation. To Jehan it was violence and it smelled like tobacco and aftershave and it sounded like  _ whirr whirr whirr _ and  _ slap slap slap  _ and it felt like being stretched too thin and held too tight.

It would have been easier if he could have just left. It would have been easier if he could have gone somewhere else in his mind. Daisy picking or fishing out on the bayou. But all the good things in his life seemed to be with his parrain. His godfather had always been there with a hand to hold and a tender word for a tender boy. In every fond memory there was this man. This man who soothed him. Who held him.

_ Who held him down. _

All of a sudden he was cold and it was dark and the warmth of the room was gone but it was the same bed and the same sheets this time older and dotted with little brown speckles of bloodstains. He was flipped over and he was looking at his hands and he was drunk again and fourteen and his ass was up in the air. His back burned with every slicing cut and he yelped and sobbed and begged and pleaded and he didn't know if he wanted it to stop or go on. Was he used to this by now? Somewhere in the distance of his mind he could hear his own voice. The voice of twenty-eight-year-old Jehan pleading with the spirit to leave him alone.

_ Leave me alone. Leave me alone. God, please!  _ **_Leave me alone!_ **

Alone was never how Jehan really was he thought as he felt his godfather's cock pressing into him from behind. It didn't hurt there. At least, not on the surface. It was sickening in his stomach sometimes and it always hurt when he was cut with the knife but it didn't hurt  _ there _ . He remembered being told that there were just some things that were  _ wrong _ . They were more than just wrong, they were  _ immoral. _ But there were loopholes, he thought, there had to be loopholes. He felt his thighs opened a little wider and a hand on the top of his head, the weight over him holding him down to the mattress while he was filled completely, his rump meeting with Father Tiefer's hips. Jehan knew what he was feeling for, knew what to expect, knew just how the odd pleasure built up and manifested, frothing like the gentle lapping waters of the bayou bringing green scum and algae to foam at the edges of his consciousness. This breathless and ruthless pleasure was  _ immoral _ . He knew it was. It was already a grain of knowledge in his mind and more and more of those grains would gather over time. His youthful voice cracked as he moaned with each thrust.

_ “Hu-uhn! Uhn! Don-n't st-op! Fuck! Fu-uck!” _

He could feel hot breath over his ear, his parrain's mouth pressed just behind it, panting from exertion and curved into a gentle smile. There was nothing  _ Parrain _ liked more than a very  _ receptive _ boy. One who did not reject. One who took and gave and did so without complaint. One who did not need punishment.

Jehan's fingers curled into the dirty sheets and he let the pleasure build. He was going to come, eventually. He liked coming. He liked the breath-hitching, lip-biting intensity of most of his orgasms that hit him in this bed and this house. They were better than the basic prickles at the base of his spine that came from touching himself late in the evening or early in the morning, coming over him with such intensity that he could hardly stand after, his legs jelly and his tummy squirming. He mostly liked the afterwards too though sometimes it was more about forgiveness than recovery.

He cried out when he came, feeling very wrung-out indeed. His voice was at once both rough and high-pitched, an unmanly shriek escaping him as he wetted the sheets with his jizz. His body's involuntary spasms were enough to milk a climax out of Tiefer who groaned over him, the sound warbling and awful until it blended into another memory and he was again young—so young—and his alb was rucked up and he was laying back on the alter, holding the bunches of material while white candles burned around him and his legs were spread and the groan was his.

_ Wrong. _

_ Wrong. _

_ Wrong. _

He had to moan or he would have to listen to the sucking, slurping, sloppy sounds that came from his parrain's mouth as he sucked over Jehan's stiff little cock.

_ Get out. Get out of my head. Get out of my house. I don't want you here. I never wanted you here. _

He gasped, reaching downward with one hand to bury his fingers into silver platinum hair, soft as corn silk. God it felt so good. The butterflies in his tummy were fluttering so hard and his whole body was trembling madly. The flames of the candles were shuddering along with the motion of  _ Parrain _ as he bobbed his head, the table sturdy but not sturdy enough to keep still beneath Jehan's naked rump. He was pressing a bit on Tiefer's head, hoping to communicate that he couldn't handle this. It was too much. He was too embarrassed. He was too nervous. But his parrain didn't like boys who didn't relent. His parrain liked boys who didn't complain. Jehan moaned, the sound wavering with the shaking of his bottom lip, growing louder as Tiefer sucked harder, his brows and mouth tightening until Jehan was screaming in a combined pain and pleasure. Shrieking and howling when he felt Tiefer's  _ teeth. _

The black spread again and he could hear himself. See himself. In the attic, laying on the floor. There was a bible next to him just inches from his hand and he was clutching the holy water to his chest and his cheeks were wet but it was just a flash and then it was gone and he was tied face forward over the toilet, his hands bound behind the back and the bowl against his stomach and he was begging.

_ Please no. Please no, god, please no! _

There was snot dribbling from his nose and his chin was covered in spit and vomit, tears streaming warm down his cheeks in the chilly bathroom air. He winced and screamed every time the belt hit him and he tried to hide his bottom but it was of no use. If he hid his bottom, he received the lashes over his back instead and he didn't know which he preferred. There was a blankness to his mind that prevented him from critical thought and all that was there, all that replaced his reason and personality was the panicked notion that he needed to  _ get away.  _ He wanted it to stop. All of it. He just wanted it to  _ stop. _

“ _ Please stop! Please, Father! Please, God, pleaaaase! _ ” He was screaming, garbling his words as he pulled against the tape that bound him, feeling it cut into his wrists. The stinging slap of leather over his thigh sent his voice up higher and so loud it rang in his own ears. “ _ AAAAH! HUNH!!! PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEAA— _ ” Sharp pain over and over and over and over. He wanted it to be over. He wanted to be done. He wanted to at least know how many times he was going to be hit but Tiefer was not kind enough to give him a number beforehand and so he had nothing to focus upon. It was suffering and it could have been unending.

_ “Are you going to be a good boy?” _

_ “YES YES YESYEEESS PLEASE G-GOD YES, I'M-MAGOODB-BO-OY!” _ He was still wailing. Still howling. Still sobbing with every ounce of his being as his stomach clenched and nausea came over him in waves.

_ “If you were really a good boy then you wouldn't have made such a mess.” _

A cold emotion came over him, hard and heavy and despairing.

_ “Clean it up, Jehan.” _

His eyes rolled up in his head and his retching warbled in reality again and he was eighteen and he was at school and he'd wrenched away every bit of himself from  _ his _ control and the news had come to him through the phone which was on the floor now, his mother's voice tinny and far away as he was throwing up in the small trashcan beside his desk.

_ He's dead. _

_ He's dead. _

_ There's something... _

Gone. When there was something so constant in one's life and even just for so few years in comparison to the life yet to be lived, it was difficult to imagine that one day it would be gone. Gone but not gone for good or even gone at all really if Jehan had to think about it too hard. He wept. He wept for all the things it had been and all the things he'd wanted it to be that it wasn't. Things had been so far removed from the love and care and comfort of when he was younger and though he knew it could never be like that again, still—still!—it was hard to remember.

There was no redemption. Redemption was a fairy tale for little boys who still had hope.

Father Emilein Tiefer had drank himself to Hell on the anniversary of the death of Jehan's father and it was no real surprise, was it? For by this time Jehan knew that it wasn't  _ himself _ that his parrain really wanted. It was a memory.

History was so cruel to repeat itself, mirrored in so many twisted ways.

He was eighteen and he'd thought the mirror shattered. But even the jagged pieces could still reflect a broken image.

_ There's something in the attic. _

He was twenty-eight and the broken mirror was looking back at him. He couldn't breathe. It was like looking up through the churning water all over again as the cool moon rose over the bayou before it was swallowed up by the heavy dark snow clouds that hung low and dropped those shimmering flakes down to the mud beneath.

There were tears on his cheeks and spit on his chin again and he was choking and drowning but there was no water. Just red eyes and corn silk hair and a smile the might have seemed malicious if Jehan was twelve again but now...well now it was what it always was.  _ Sad. _ Sad in ways that didn't make sense to a twelve-year-old with too many stars in his eyes. Sad in ways that Jehan couldn't help but understand now.

“In the name of the F-Father—” he choked out, only to gasp just after.

“ _ In the name of the Father, _ ” the spirit of Emilein Tiefer sighed, as though he were tired now after having spent so much energy fighting with Jehan's memories. “ _ And of the son... _ ” He reached out with one icy translucent pale hand with too-long fingers and too-long fingernails. The touch was not present or tangible in ways that Jehan knew. It was a cold and a drawing-out of sorts. Something he could not bring himself to understand for if he did, he thought perhaps death would become almost overly familiar.

_ And of the son. _

Jehan let out a loose sob as he looked up at the spirit, uncertain at the quality of the image as though he were staring at a vision on the surface of a river, rippling and capricious. “Are you going to rape me, Parrain?”

The wicked smile waned and the vulnerability in his eyes deepened as something fundamental seemed to break into being within Father Tiefer's long dead awareness. It was a trick, Jehan thought weakly. A trick by this very devil, he was sure. He mumbled out more prayer, his teeth tight together.

_ “Most cunning serpent, you shall no more dare to deceive the human race, persecute the Church, torment God's elect and sift them as wheat. You shall no more dare to deceive...”  _ He let out another wet sob. “ _ You shall no more dare to deceive me. _ ”

The image of his parrain seemed to melt away at the edges, petering out slowly as though it were a flame gradually starved of oxygen. Certainty in his words and the bedrock of his faith shook as he heard whispered silken words in his mind.

_ I loved you. _

A thousand moments when he had been held sweetly tumbled in his mind and he wept again, sitting on his feet as the darkness gathered around him and he felt the cold where the spirit had touched him upon his jaw, as though ice itself had manifested to press against the warmth of his life. He could see himself lying with his head upon his parrain's naked shoulder, basking in the aftershocks of climax and comfort. Hidden kisses over his thighs and his groin and the butterflies in his tummy that soft whispered words of praise and compliment bestowed upon him. Soft touches. Seeking forgiveness. Seeking acceptance. Seeking something divine from a boy who could not help but give and give and give until there was nothing left of him but  _ this. _

_ Something in... _

“You didn't.” His voice was muted and flat in the cold attic and he could see his breath floating up before him. “You couldn't.”

But Jehan was lying. Because somehow he knew.

_ He did. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The tags and rating have been updated to reflect what happens in this chapter. I wondered if I wanted to continue it. I decided that yes...yes I did.


	3. Chapter 3

“I'm recommending a short sabbatical. You need some time.” Dr. Foster was older, Jehan would place him in his mid-sixties, and he sat on the desk in the small exam room, putting his loafer-clad foot on the chair instead of his rump. He fingered his mustache with his thumb and pointer. “You're stressed.”

“Stressed,” Jehan repeated back to him, his hands feeling a bit numb from the chill of the doctor's office.

“Yep. Stressed. You put a lot on yourself and I know you don't like coming here.”

He let out a breathy and nervous little laugh. “Does anyone?”

“No. Holdover trauma from getting shots as a kid usually. You're different. Shots don't bother you.”

Jehan swallowed hard, holding his coat close around him which he'd refused to take off. The nurses were used to that by now. Jehan didn't take off his clothes at the doctor's office. They just had to work around it. “It's not the shots.” He looked down at his shoes. “It's you.”

“I know.” He said it lightly, conversationally, and he didn't look at Jehan when he did it. “There's something about me that reminds you of something you don't like. That's okay. I don't take it personally. But being the only doctor in this town is something of a curse when it comes to that. Now are you gonna take a break?”

“Are you going to give me a choice?”

“No. I'm going to be giving your uppers a call.”

Jehan sighed. “I figured.”

“A month, Father.”

“A month,” he repeated in a soft sigh. “Just a month.”

“A month before a follow-up.”

He sighed again, this time through his nose as he nodded a bit and got up out of the chair. He didn't take off his clothes and he didn't sit on exam tables. It was a stretch that he would even go into the exam room but there wasn't much of a choice when it came right down to it. He nodded again but didn't move toward the door.

Dr. Foster looked at him, his blue eyes soft and discerning. “Is there something else, Father?”

“N-Not...right now.”

“Will it ever be right now?”

Jehan looked at the door handle. “I don't know.”

He didn't walk home. He hadn't been home. Not for a week. He'd slept on the couch in the church office for a night before Barton found him there and forced him to come home with him to sleep in his guest bedroom which smelled vaguely of mothballs and old books. They'd split a bottle of Gentleman Jack that first night and he'd helped the old man with some chores that wanted done every day thereafter, looking to at least do what he could while he was there. Barton told him stories about his youth, driving an old truck that sold candies out the back and sitting down at the tracks eating ham sandwiches and watching the trains roll on by. It was simple. It was easy. It was weak.

He woke in the night sometimes with a cold sweat after nightmares. Seeing himself in mirrors but instead of his boring, regular brown hair, it was white.

_White._

He'd rushed from the bed into Barton's old bathroom, nearly sending the man's blood pressure medication to the floor when he frantically sought the light switch. He'd searched every inch of his head, his hands shaking madly.

_No white. Not yet._

He walked through the cold, his hands in his pockets and he let himself into Barton's little house, taking his shoes off onto the mat near the door before he shuffled in his socks over the linoleum of the kitchen to put some more wood pellets into the stove so it could warm up a bit more. Barton would usually do it himself but Jehan liked to think he might save the man some trouble. He made himself a pot of tea and sat down on the couch, leaving the old worn chair for Barton when he came home. He read one of the books from the bookshelf, hardly paying any attention at all to whatever it was. Some history or another.

Easy.

Boring.

Distracting.

Anything to keep himself from the devastating reality of self-reflection. Nothing could really stop it. His eyes floated above the page, unseeing while bits of memory faded in and out. Things he had wished to forget for all time that just wouldn't let him go, clawing their way back up from the depths of the Hell which lay within his own mind.

He was so lost that he didn't hear the latch of the door and was only snapped out of it when Barton wandered into the room, setting his coat over the back of his chair.

“Good afternoon,” Jehan tried, his voice breathless though he had only just been sitting there.

_Breathless. Drowning._

Barton sighed and sat, his face tired. “What'd ol' Foster say?”

“I'm on a break. He says I'm stressed.”

“You're _something,_ anyway,” the old man chuckled.

Jehan was quiet for a few seconds. “You...never asked why I was sleeping in the church.”

The old man shrugged one shoulder. “A man's gotta have a reason for everything he does now? Take care not to sound like my late wife, Father. Sometimes you have a reason, sometimes you ain't have a reason and sometimes you ain't have a reason because it ain't a body's business to know besides you and God. But if there is one and you gotta let it up off those shoulders, you know you're safe here. I ain't no man to judge.” He got up, shuffling into his kitchen to pour himself a bit of Jehan's tea from the kettle before he popped it in the microwave to heat it a bit. When he came back, he sat down again and raised expectant eyes.

Jehan closed the book and set it aside, his breath shaky. “I think there's a ghost in my house. Or...a demon. Or something.” He let that sit there in the warm dry air, heated by the stove.

“A demon.”

“Yeah.”

“You ain't done a blessing on that house?”

Jehan cleared his throat. “I've done a few. I tried to do another one...tried to cast it out. But...it won't go. It's still there, I think.”

Barton rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. “Blessing didn't work, thing is still there, and of course you're stressed and you're here rather than there. You uhm...” he paused, raising a brow at Jehan where he sat. “You haven't had any weird things happen _here_ have you?”

“Bad dreams.”

“Father have you ever...”

“I know what you're going to ask. Exorcisms? No. Nothing ever like that. See, I can't even be sure it's a demon. It could just be...I don't know.” He rubbed at his face. “Bad memories.” He didn't want to look up. He didn't want to know what Barton thought about him and his madness. It was difficult enough having to live it, it would have been much too hard to see it reflected back at him in someone's reaction to it.

“Bad memories can be just as destructive as any demon,” Barton replied. “Eat you up from the inside out.”

Jehan felt like he'd been punched in the guts. “It's in the attic.”

“It's not in the attic,” the old man replied. “It's in _your_ attic.” Sagely, he lifted up one arthritic finger and tapped at his own temple.

He leaned back, his head on the cushion of the couch as he peered over at Barton and his stomach squirmed. It was difficult to breathe. “I don't want to see it again. I want it to go away. I want it to just leave me alone and not haunt me like it does.”

“You think it's that simple?”

“Why not?”

Barton gave out a little barking laugh. “Father, you've been taking confessions for years. You know humans ain't that easy. We pick and we pick and we pick at the scabs in our own minds even when we're not paying attention. Sometimes it takes someone else to tell you that you're bleedin'. And Father...you're bleeding.”

He could feel the tears behind his eyes. “I don't know what to do, Barton. I don't want to go home.”

“I think that sometimes the best answer is to do what you don't want to do the most.”

“Oh god.” He covered his face.

“But you don't have to go alone.”

_Alone._

Barton leaned forward, his elbows on his knees as Jehan uncovered his eyes again and looked at him through unshed tears. “You don't ever have to do anything alone. I bet you never thought about that before, have you Father? You've been alone for a long time even when you were with someone. All in that mind o' yours. It's time we got you out of that attic. C'mon. We're losin' light.”

He wiped at his eyes to draw out the wetness. “What? Tonight?”

“Better than lettin' you get cold feet. Come on, Jehan. Put your shoes on.”

It was cold and the sun was setting over the bayou and the house was dark with windows shining in the red light like the eyes that haunted him at night. He hugged himself when he stepped into the foyer and gave pause to let Barton in around him, hoping it didn't seem overly cowardly that he wanted the old man to step further in before him. There was a quiet to this place. The furnace was running, he could hear it in the bowels of the house but it was cold despite, the sort of cold that death might bring.

He could see his breath.

“I see what you mean here,” Barton murmured, rubbing his hands over his upper arms. He raised his voice, raspy and confident. “Listen here, you crazy old fuck! Get the hell out!”

Jehan chose to stand right behind him, feeling twelve years old again with his heart in his throat while he waited for the retribution. There wouldn't be any when Barton was here. That was the danger with _adults_. They always had honeyed words for each other and punishment for him. What would the punishment be like if he ever told someone about Tiefer? What would the punishment be like if Tiefer _thought_ he'd told? His heart squeezed hard.

_I can't ever come back here. He'll kill me. From beyond the grave, straight from Hell, he'll kill me. He'll drag me right down with him and that'll be the end of me. They won't even find my body._

Adults, after all, were immune from true accountability. They were slippery. They managed to weasel out from anything and everything. Tiefer would always have his hands on Jehan. On his past, on his present, on his future. Everything that he was, he was Tiefer's boy.

Barton's scraggly brows were hard together in the middle of his forehead and he turned around to look at Jehan before he turned around again and addressed the “demon.” “You ain't got enough o' this boy when you were alive, you sticky cunt!?”

Jehan's heart dropped into his bowels and he stared at the back of Barton's head, covered by a knitted beanie.

_When you were alive._

“B-Barton...”

“What, you think I ain't had my suspicions?” he snapped back. “All o' this just confirms it. Too late. _Far_ too late,” he spat.

He stood in the foyer as Barton took a few steps forward into the house toward the kitchen, pulling off his thin scarf and draping it over the back of the chair. The old man looked around with baleful eyes, sharp from years of _conjecture_. Was this what it felt like to be _known?_ A sudden validation he'd never felt before bloomed within him like a fiery star of light.

“Barton...you...you've been the deacon...”

“Longer than you've been alive,” he replied, his gaze traveling up toward the ceiling. “You want some coffee? You might need it. I might need it.” He didn't wait for a reply, heading toward the coffeemaker and busily starting a pot. “You've got a hell of a demon in your attic. But I don't think your traditional exorcism is going to work on this one.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? I mean this is something you might have the _tools_ to be rid of but you might not have the _strength_ to be rid of.” He cleared his throat, a silence forming between them after his words that was heavy and difficult to break.

Jehan felt stupid.

His voice was weak. “H-How do I find it? Can you help me?”

“I can help you if you can help me. Jehan...” he sighed. “This is a small place. The world is so little here. A man, a _godly_ man, is only just a man in the end. You know that because you can see yourself and know yourself to be nothing more than flesh and bone. Your demon is no demon. He's a memory of a man just as flawed and terrible as the rest of us. Moreso, if I may. Is it his own fault? Some of it, yes. Some of it, no. A terrible combination of life's ills that morphed him into what he is now.”

Jehan felt a hard lump in his throat.

Barton stared at him severely. “What is his legacy, Jehan? Is it only your fear? Or is there more?”

“Is fear not enough?”

Barton seemed very satisfied with that answer and then moved to Jehan's sink where just a bowl and spoon sat dirty. He washed them while the coffee brewed, filling the small house with the scent and providing the illusion of life. It was difficult to consider that there could have been _life_ here. Jehan hadn't ever thought about it that way. That he was _living_ and that he was _alive._ There was so much that he only did here because he thought he must and so much that was missing. Just seeing another person doing something menial in this strange, liminal space between living and dying was enough to give him the notion that he really was _here and now._

Jehan looked down at his shaking hands, the backs of them pale and lined with blue veins. There was time, thought, there was time enough for every small instance of black bile to spew forth from him. He didn't have to do it all at once. His voice sounded small.

“I was twelve.”

Barton toweled his hands off, looking at him easily. All these years and Jehan had known that most people would have looked away from him. Unable to bring themselves to look at him, to face something monstrous like someone else's pain. But Barton looked straight at him as though it were as easy as breath to hear something so shattering.

Jehan wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Is it wrong to still love him?”

“Father,” Barton replied with a small, warm smile, “There is not a thing you could do for him that would be wrong. Least of all love. You tried. For all your youth, you tried. It's time to let it go.”

_There's something in the attic._

Jehan accepted a hot cup of coffee and sipped at it, letting the black bitterness soothe him at least for a little while before he would have to own everything he felt in his heart. Before he would have to make it all real. If it could be real, anyway. When he was finished, he set the mug down on the table and made the sign of the cross. Was he ready? Could he ever be?

The attic was cold.

_Cold as the grave._

He could see small bits of snow floating down through the window and he could hear Barton's weight on the creaking boards behind him. “I tried before,” he said aloud, surprised at how muffled his voice was in the small attic. “I tried so many times. But...”

“You tried to get him to leave you. But what you needed to do was leave him.”

“I did...didn't I? When I was eighteen. I left.” He remembered it clearly, Tiefer's hands on his throat, those cold eyes staring down at him with an icy fire behind them. Blood. A knife. A will that wasn't there any other time. If Jehan was going to leave, he was going to leave _for good._ Tiefer was going to make sure of that.

“You left. But you didn't leave his heart...whatever kind of heart a man like him can have.”

_He loved me._

Jehan wiped away another set of tears. “This is all so complicated. It's so messy. I didn't want it to be messy. I wanted it to be _gone._ ”

Barton groaned when he moved to sit down on the bare floor, adjusting his knit cap and clearing his throat. “Humans are never simple and never just gone. They leave something with you. I knew him, and I thought I knew him well. It must have been difficult for you. To know that if you told anyone that they wouldn't believe you. How could they? I want to be able to say that I would have. But would I? It's so much easier to ignore things than it is to face them. That's the nature of us as people. Things don't just go away, you have to hold them and know them and let them dissolve in your hands.” He flicked his eyes to the window. “Like snow.”

_Like snow._

_Like snow._

_Like snow in the attic._

Jehan sat down nearby, close to the window, letting his eyes shift out of focus. “I tried to kill him once. I couldn't. I... _wouldn't._ I didn't want to. Because after everything, it wasn't fear then like it's fear now. I wasn't afraid then that he was a part of me. I knew he was. I could feel him in my blood. Everything that I was, he was a part of it. And that rings true even now after I'd thought him gone. After I thought I'd escaped.” He let out a sigh through his nose. “How do I do this, Barton? How do I hold it all in my hands when it's so big and so terrible and so ugly? How do I look at it and know that I can dissolve it as though it won't dissolve me?”

“You let it out slowly and you hold each part until it's gone. And it might hurt. But you do it because you have to do it and you do it because it's good for you and you do it here because you have to. Because you won't do it anywhere else.”

_Will it ever be right now?_

It took him much longer this time to summon it but he did eventually, making the sign of the cross just before he spoke again. “I didn't know it was wrong at first. I think I had some suspicion...but it felt good.” He let each thing he admitted fall out of his mouth and he held his hands out before him as though he were taking communion, his words and meanings tumbling out over his fingers like the snow fell outside the window. He imagined each confession as those pure white flakes, haphazard and withdrawn, falling away from him as he spoke them.

_There's something in the attic._

“I never told—”

_Jehan is in the attic._

“I tried to stop him—”

_Jehan is in the attic when it snows._

“I was just a child—”

_Jehan is in..._

“I loved him—”

_Jehan!_

“I still do. I don't regret it.”

_Cold. Nipping at his fingertips. Each little pin prick of white—white!—tingling under his flesh while it was eaten away by the heat of him. He was warm. He was so warm and alive and real and that corn silk hair and those red eyes, well they were just like the snow which melted away at just barely a touch. An image on the surface of a thawed pond warped at motion and disrupted by the churning. Fragile. Fragile like six-pointed flakes bundled and falling from tempestuous gray winter skies._

Jehan barely felt the salt trails on his cheeks and his throat when he swallowed, his mouth feeling too full of words and his heart feeling too empty of them. He closed his eyes. “I thought wanted to drive you out, Father. But what I really wanted was for you to know that I love you. And even though I don't want to forgive you, I have to. I have to. Or I can't forgive myself. That's your legacy. After all you did to me, that's your legacy. If I can't forgive myself, I'll kill myself...intentionally or not. Just like you did.” This was nothing like the forgiveness of a boy who felt butterfly kisses on the delicate pale flesh inside his thighs. This was not the forgiveness of a child's mind.

This was grown. This was mature. This was forgiving but not forgetting. This was beyond spite or hurt or human.

_Forgive me, Father..._

“I forgive you. I know you tried. I tried too. I know you want it. It's why you're here. Because you love me. Because only I can offer you absolution. Well, Father? _'_ _I absolve thee from thy sins, I absolve thee from thy thoughts, from thy words, from thy deeds, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and I restore thee to the Sacrament of the Holy Church...'_ Though I don't know if I can do that anymore...since your time has already passed. I can try. That's all I can do. I can only ever try. And I'm going to try. From now on. For my own sake. And...for God's sake.” He let himself have half a smile and heard Barton's barely perceptible humored sniff from nearby.

He couldn't feel his fingers when he put them down in his lap and he didn't have any idea of how late it was. He'd been speaking—confessing—for hours, it seemed, and his voice was raspy and overused. When quiet fell, it fell hard there was a silence that was boundless and thick around him.

Both he and Barton let it draw out a little bit, let it settle in like it was meant to be there, heavy and delicate like a white blanket over a winter night. There was nothing calmer than the quiet of snow on a midwinter night, after all.

He waited for an icy touch. He waited for a whisper. He waited for his mind to tell him that there was something in the attic.

_Quiet._

_Quiet._

_Quiet._

_And still not alone._

The thought was warm and sweet and there was a comfort in it like the sort one feels when one pulls the rope and chimes the bells above. He managed to look at Barton through the darkness. “What now?”

Barton's smile was small again and infinitely loving and somehow Jehan thought it must have been true that man was made in God's own image for he could not imagine God in any other form than this one before him. “Tea, Jehan. It'll warm you.”

“Just tea?” he asked sardonically, his limbs protesting his efforts to get up. Still, he managed, finding himself trembling mightily.

“Just tea. For now. Maybe a beer later when I get your thermostat cranked up high enough. Come on.”

“Did I do alright?”

He gave pause, staring at Jehan for a moment, enough for his eyes to shine through the dim. “How do you think you did?”

_Am I the hero? Or the villain?_

_Am I..._

_I am._

_I am the hero._

“I think I did okay.” He nodded to himself, rubbing his arms with his hands before he made his way down the access ladder to the much warmer hall below. “I think I'm gonna be okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, Jehan. I hope we're both gonna be okay.


End file.
